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Video: Radiation leaks from Japan nuke plant

Closed captioning of: Radiation leaks from Japan nuke plant

>>>good morning. breaking news.
japan
's nuclear crisis takes a dire turn. high levels of radiation spewing from the damaged
nuclear plant
following an explosion at a third reactor and a fire in a fourth. an official is calling it, quote, a very bad scenario as officials work to contain the risk today, tuesday, march 15,
2011
.

>>>welcome to "today" on this tuesday morning. i'm
meredith vieira
.

>>officials in
japan
are saying the radiation leaking from the crippled
nuclear power plant
is enough to impact
human health
.

>>the big concern is the
number 2
reactor which exploded on monday sending more radiation into the air and then a fire at reactor 4 broke out. that one had been shut down for maintenance before the quake. all but 50 employees of the plant have been evacuated. in a nationally televised address
japan
's prime minister urged anyone living near the plant who had not already evacuated to seal themselves indoors and warned of the very
high risk
of more leaks.

>>you hear the story and i think about the bravery of the 50 people who remain at the plant trying to cool the reactors at great personal risk.

>>you wonder if they will have to leave as well and then what's going to happen?

>>there is a rare piece of good news. rescuers found a 70-year-old woman alive in her home four days after it was
swept away
by the tsunami.
ann curry
has details and a closer look at the toll this crisis is taking on people there. let's begin on this tuesday morning with the nuclear crisis.
robert bazell
, nbc's chief science correspondent, is in
tokyo
. good morning to you.

>> reporter: good morning, matt. the nuclear crisis in
japan
has taken a turn for the worse. many people are saying it's ominous. that explosion in reactor
number 4
blew a hole in the cement containment facility allowing radiation to leak. the fire in the other reactor is allowing some radiation to get out. there are several reactors at the fukushima site. one of them in the cement dome. so far the metal cylinder has not broken but radiation is escaping.

>>the danger seems to have significantly increased over the past couple of days.

>> reporter: the
japanese prime ministernaoto kan
told people the radiation wasn't a widespread hazard and there was no need to evacuate beyond the 12 miles already established. those leaving have been checked for radiation. all the but the most essential personal nel have been told to leave the site. they offered public apologies.

>> translator: this is a very poor, very bad scenario.

>> reporter: satellite photos before and after show the damage. the fire that broke out today is at a reactor that was shut down for maintenance before the earthquake and was not releasing large quantities of radiation. experts agree the total amount of radiation isn't a significant
health hazard
beyond the area of the reactor.

>>the amount of radiation that's likely to be released is going to be relatively small compared to an accident like chernobyl.

>>bob, we mentioned that
tokyo
is 170 miles south of the
power plant
. i understand there is -- maybe chaos is too strong a word but there are a lot of people who are uneasy in
tokyo
trying to get out of the country any way they can. is that correc is that correct? are you seeing that?

>> reporter: mostly foreigners are trying to get out. people aren't leaving
tokyo
who live here. no one is saying the radiation levels are posing a threat at this time. a lot of foreigners who have the option of getting out are looking at this and saying, well, it's not so bad right now. there has not been this catastrophic leak of radiation everybody fears but let's not wait around for that to happen. if it did nobody's getting out of anywhere. that's the mentality driving a lot of people to book flights and trains to get as far as from here as they can.

When Japan lost a large chunk of its electricity-generating capacity to the one-two punch of earthquake and tsunami, the narrative in parts of one of the world’s most technologically advanced societies was transformed overnight into one of Third World hardship.

For most Japanese, the rolling outages instituted in the wake of the twin disasters translate to inconvenience, sacrifice and economic loss. But for tens of thousands who are now homeless and huddled in evacuation centers in the hard-hit northeast, the stakes are much higher.

"In known evacuation centers, people who reached actual evacuation centers, you have a half million Japanese displaced. They don't have water, they don't have electricity, they don't have oil," said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And the temperatures are... dipping below freezing because it's snowing in most of those regions. So there's an acute humanitarian crisis today in Japan.”

Nuclear plant occupies engineers
The difficulties don’t end there. Engineers with the Tokyo Electric Power Co., who normally might be working to get shut-down nuclear plants back online, are instead occupied with a meltdown at the company’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

And for the aid organizations who seek to help the displaced, the lack of power in the quake zone and freezing temperatures are one more reason to rush, and one more challenge to face.

The disaster that struck Japan on Friday knocked out about one-fifth of the country’s 55 nuclear reactors, which normally provide nearly 30 percent of the total power in the country. It also clobbered many thermal plants and knocked out an unknown portion of Japan’s electricity transmission system.

Disaster at a glance

Magnitude, location
A massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake — fifth largest since 1900 — struck at 2:46 p.m. local time (12:46 a.m. ET) on March 11, centered approximately 100 miles east of Sendai city on Japan’s main island, Honshu.

Tsunami
The quake generated seven separate tsunami waves, the first of which struck 26 minutes after the earthquake and towered as high as 30 meters (nearly 100 feet) in some places, according to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The waves swept boats, cars, buildings and tons of debris miles inland in Japan. Smaller swells struck other Pacific Rim countries and even the United States, causing serious but far less extensive damage.

Casualties
Police have confirmed 12,087 deaths, with 15,552 reported missing as of Sunday.

Nuclear plants
The fuel rods in three of the Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant are believed to have at least partially melted, and officials say that they fear that the core of one of the reactors has been breached, resulting in more-serious radioactive contamination. Adding to the concern is the discovery of traces of plutonium in soil outside the plant and the release of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures are elevated in several of the plant's spent fuel pools, suggesting that water has receded to expose the rods, releasing more radiation. Workers at the plant have reconnected electrical lines to the plant and are working to restart the primarly cooling system, Japanese authorities, meanwhile, have ordered the evacuation of a 19-mile radius around the plant. The U.S. has recommended that its citizens living within 50 miles of the plant evacuate the area or take shelter indoors.

Other impacts
Approximately 161,600 people were living in shelters set up in 16 prefectures as of Sunday, according to Reuters. Approximately 167,700 households in the north remained without power, TEPCO reported Sunday. Rolling blackouts have been imposed to conserve power around Tokyo and northern Honshu. At least 200,000 households in eight prefectures were without running water as of Sunday, the Health Ministry said. Some commodities, including gas, medicine and other necessities, are scarce in parts of the country. Radiation has been detected in both food and water in numerous prefectures and in some cases has exceeded the legal limit in Japan.

In the northern part of the country, in addition to powerless evacuation centers, the Japanese government said Monday that some 1.25 million homes were without heat, and nearly 3.2 million people were facing reduced gas supplies in the coming days. Other estimates put the number of homes already without power two to three times higher.

In the city of Ishinomaki, previously home to about 164,000 people, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported Monday that survivors seeking heat and shelter crowded into a Red Cross hospital, which was one of the only buildings in the city that still had power.

In addition to those with no electricity, customers in many parts of the country are having to cope with three-hour rolling blackouts instituted Monday by TEPCO, the largest power company of 10 in the country and the operator of the Fukushima plants. It said Monday that the rolling blackouts would affect 3 million customers, including large factories and buildings, and would likely continue through the end of April.

On Tuesday a second utility, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said it would also implement electricity rationing, Kyodo News Service reported. Tohuku covers a large swath of the country north of Tokyo, including many of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami.

Tohoku Electric officials said power rationing could run for several months — with outages of up to six hours a day in some prefectures, Kyodo reported, while the company worked to restore quake-damages thermal plants. Company officials said, however, that the rolling blackouts would exclude quake hit areas that are trying to recover.

“What’s probably going on in Japan is they are trying to get as much power as they can to as many people as they can," said Walt Pollock, a retired vice president of power supply for Portland General Electric Co. "So they implement the rolling blackouts … to spread the pain.”

Replacing lost generating capacity suffered in the quake is a long-term problem — especially in the nuclear sector, where seriously damaged plants are unlikely to be repaired or restarted, he said.

"There's no easy answers to how Japan would get ... the kind power that 5 (to) 8 nuclear power plants provide," said Pollock. "The number of nuclear plants they have off line is far greater than the generating capacity of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest single power generating plant in the (U.S.) Northwest."

There is not much information yet to predict how long it might take to restore some power to sections of Japan that were taken off line by the disaster.

“There are no completely isolated parts of the grid,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Japan has greater interconnection throughout the country than, let's say, in the United States."

"The big open question is, what impact has the physical destruction had on the grid itself" he adds. "So even if in theory you can wheel power from one part to another, if some of the transmission lines are down... that can make that task much more difficult."

Technology fades to black
The Japanese government has called on citizens and businesses to conserve wherever possible to ease the strain on the system. Train system service is limited, stores have shortened hours, escalators and elevators run sporadically, and massive video screens that normally add to the cacophony of Tokyo life were dark.

The rationing is causing discomfort and confusion in many places, as well as logistical problems, which affect aid workers along with residents in a country that is accustomed to modern efficiency.

World Vision International, a Christian nonprofit based in Federal Way, Wash., said the three-person advance team it dispatched to the battered city of Sendai spent one night in cars and a second in a church while on the way deliver bottled water, blankets and baby supplies and pave the way for a larger-scale relief effort.

There is power in the center of Sendai, said communications and outreach director Mitsuko Sobata, Tokyo-based communications and advocacy officer for the organization. But the organization has little information about the situation in Tome, a small city normally about an hour's drive to the north that World Vision plans to aid at the suggestion of the government in Sendai. She says the Tome’s government has been trying to grapple with thousands of evacuees and virtually impossible to reach by phone.

“It certainly complicates the situation,” said Casey Calamusa, international news officer with World Vision who is working in Tokyo. “So much of what we do nowadays is reliant on technology.”

In a highly-anticipated speech to Congress Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that a potential nuclear deal being negotiated by major powers including the United States "paves Iran's path to the bomb."